


we are searching (but the days are not long enough)

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [25]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Cannon compliant, F/M, Iron Man 1, Pepper while Tony is in afghanistan, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 08:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15553683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: What does the world do, when one of the greatest minds of their generation disappears?Nothing.Pepper wants there to be more.  She wants the world to stand still, for schools to close and the cars on the street to stop moving, for flags to fly at half mast because he deserved it, deserved to be more than a news story that people stopped listening to after the third day and a conversation piece for women getting their nails done at the salon, for a million of those weapons he built to go off at the exact same time in a thousand gun salute, so loud and sudden that it would shake the ground that people stand on, but that is not what he gets.





	we are searching (but the days are not long enough)

What does the world do, when one of the greatest minds of their generation disappears?

Nothing.

Pepper wants there to be more.  She wants the world to stand still, for schools to close and the cars on the street to stop moving, for flags to fly at half mast because he deserved it, deserved to be more than a news story that people stopped listening to after the third day and a conversation piece for women getting their nails done at the salon, for a million of those weapons he built to go off at the exact same time in a thousand gun salute, so loud and sudden that it would shake the ground that people stand on, but that is not what he gets.

He gets a moment.  A news story.  A search team that quickly dissolves because there are more crisis' to handle and the military has no shortage of guns, so why bother to waste so many resources on an arms dealer?

 _Something bad happened on the way back to base,_ Rhodey had told her, his voice crackling in and out of the static because the service was no good.  Tony had tried to get him to take a top of the line Stark phone so he could reach them anywhere that he was stationed, but Rhodey had declined, saying that he refuses to take hand outs.  Pepper wished he would have taken it.   _A lot of people died,_ and Pepper felt the ground fall out from beneath her feet, had her stomach drop like she was in the first dip of a roller coaster.   _He's not one of them._  And when she asked what that meant he had gone a little too quiet for a little too long and she knew the answer: nothing good.

"This was a blow."  Stane is addressing the board of directors.  Pepper is standing beside him.  It is not where she wants to be but where she has to be, for Tony, to keep things running smoothly and keep his company from crashing before he manages to return.   "I'm not going to pretend that it isn't.  But it's something that we can handle."

"And if he does not return?"

Silence.  Pepper has to close her eyes to keep from flinching, tightens her grip on the clip board to keep from lashing out, because these people, she realizes suddenly, do not care, not about anyone in the room, not her or Stane or Tony or even Stark Industries, just the money, just themselves, just their ability to line their own pockets.  It is a truth that Tony must have known his whole life, and Pepper is not sure why it comes a surprise to her now.  

 _Not an option,_ she wants to yell out, but she is not supposed to be speaking.

"At the moment, we don't see the need to entertain that possibility.  As of now, we move forward as if Tony could walk through that door at any moment."  Pepper turns to the door almost on instinct, like he really might slam the doors open and stride through, whiskey in hand, like he had done so many times before.  "It's business as usual at Stark Industries."

 

 

 

He wasn't lying.

For thousands ( _millions?  She doesn't know.  She should know.  Add it to the list)_ of people across the world, that's exactly what happened.  Engineers kept creating, mechanics kept working, people woke up in the morning and left with a days pay, and the weapons kept rolling out at almost thirty percent a higher rate than normal, like Stane and all the higher ups are wanting to show the world just how little Tony's disappearance had affected them.  But not Pepper.  With Tony gone, there is no normal for her to return to.

Stane had told her to keep coming to work, but there is nothing to  _do._ Her job was Tony and Tony is gone, disappeared, maybe bleeding out in the sand somewhere and in any case, a million miles away from her.  She tries to keep herself busy, but there is only so much she can do before her to-do list runs out.

"Jarvis?"  Her eyes are aching.   Her office is still in Tony's house so that is where she has been staying ( _she cannot bear for it to be empty and Jarvis needs the company_ ), but for the most part she leaves the shades drawn and the lights out, like to shine light on his absence would make it more real than it already was.  The only problem is that she isn't so good at reading in the dark.  "Any updates?"

"Not since the last time you asked me."  There had not been any updates before that, either.  Or the day before that.  Or the day before that one.  "I'll be sure to let you know."

She does not like the waiting game.   _You like to punch your way through your feelings,_ she hears, and it is a ghost from long ago, a time before Tony Stark, where her mother leaned across the kitchen table and gripped her hands and Pepper could do nothing but nod because her lip was swollen so bad, a side affect of a slap to the face that she got from a stranger because she could not find it in herself to walk away.   _But someday that just isn't going to be enough._

Not that she hasn't tried.  She's done everything she can think of- organized all the filing cabinets, sifted through all of Tony's unopened email's, cleaned his house, scrubbed down DUM-E.  But as some point you just run out.  There is only so long you can keep yourself in motion.

"What are the odds that he's going to be coming back home?"  An uncharacteristic silence.  "I know you ran them."

It's strange, to feel fond of a computer, but she is, and she can almost sense the pain rolling off of him when Jarvis answers.

"I'm not sure that's the best line of questioning for the time being, Ms. Potts."

"Jarvis.  I need to know."  She is clutching the back of the chair.  She is thinking about going home.  She's thinking about stealing a plane and leading the search for him herself.  "I need to be prepared.  We need to face the facts."

 _Who_ 's  _we, Pepper?  There's no one._ The sob is building in her throat.  She had not let herself cry, but now in the dark of this empty house that is too quiet without him, when there is nothing left to act a distraction the sob bursts out of her, shakes her down to her knees.   _You made him your home and now he's gone._

"Not good.  I would expect-,"  Another pause.  She tells herself that he is just running calculations.  "I would not expect him to return to us anytime soon."

This, she knows now, is what heart break feels like.

 

 

 

On the one month anniversary of Tony Stark's death, Happy joins her.

He's been out of a job.  He keeps getting paid because that's in his contract, but time is ticking, and he's already started looking for another one.  Pepper tries not to look at is as a betrayal.

"I'm still on the clock."  They have been watching news reports all day.  Pepper could not quiet convince herself that it had been that long- it's like this whole time it has been nothing more than one chaotic night, one drawn out nightmare.  She still expects him to go home.  "I could take you home."

"I'm good."  The words come out of her mechanically.  "All my clothes are here, anyways."

"Not that home."  Happy reaches across the table to lay a hand on her arm and she pulls away.  "I meant back to your parent's house.  Just for a little.   Until it dies down... one way or another."

Pepper does not have an answer.  There have been an endless cycle of terrible moments these past few weeks, and just when she thinks that she finally is gathering enough strength to bear it, it seems like something new comes along to knock her off her feet. 

"No."  She cannot explain to him that there is nothing left for her to go home to. That there never had been enough room for her back there.  That it was Tony that gave her the space to breathe, who gave her the room to grow and the means to do it.  "Tony's coming back.  And I'm going to be right here when he does."

"It's been a month."

"Rhodey said-,"

"Rhodey's delusional."  Happy gathered himself up, and the way he is looking at her it's like he knows how bad things have gotten. Like he knows that she wears Tony's old t-shirts and sleeps in his bed just because it still smells like him, that she wanders through the garage and runs her hands over half finished projects and refuses to throw out that cup of cold coffee on his desk even though everything else is spotless, that sometimes she finds herself on her knees by the bed praying to a God that she has not talked to in years promised Him everything if he would just bring Tony home, no matter what it cost her.  "If they haven't found him now, they aren't going to.  There's no point in looking for something that isn't there.  And you're getting just has bad."

"He's going to come home."

She will not cry.  Not in front of him.  Not in front of anyone.  She will cry when Tony comes back, and only then, because that is when she is allowed to be weak again.  

"He will!"  Her voice cracks.  "For God's sake, Happy, it's Tony!"

"He's just a man."  

"He always wins."

"Those were bad people out there.  Bad people with big guns.   _His_ guns."  There's a bit of blame there.  A question that everyone has glossed over, one that bothers her but that Pepper pushed to the back of her mind for the moment, because screw the company and screw how those weapons got in his hands, it did not matter when Tony was gone.  Nothing mattered when Tony was gone.  "And he always said that the winners are the ones holding the biggest stick."

"He'll come back to me."   She did not meant to say it, but- "He promised to always come home to me."

"He's not the kind of man to keep his promises."

"He's always kept this one."  The tears spill over and drop down to her shirt,  _his_ shirt.  "Don't give up on him yet, Happy."

"This isn't giving up."  She does not want him to leave.  She does not want to face this alone.  There are no other people that loved Tony the way she does besides Happy, who looked at him and saw someone that was worth their loyalty even with all the cracks.  "This is moving forward."

"Not yet."

"Why not?"  He has her by the shoulders.  She half excepts him to start shaking her.  "It's time."

"I love him."  Happy had known, but this is the first time she has said it out loud.  The words work like a sedative.  "Would you walk away from someone like that, when you love him?"

"I loved him, too."  

Loved.  Past tense.  She does not know what to do with that.  "Not like this."

"No."  She thinks he is going to offer her another chance for a ride home, but he just picks up a suitcase, a collection of things that he had left behind at the mansion and now felt the need to claim.  "Probably not like that."

 

 

 

It's the two month mark when Stane comes to see her.

She's not in the mood for visitors.  There has been nothing for her to do- no messes to clean, no calls to field, no inventions to scan over and send to SI.  There is only her, and her thoughts, and Jarvis with his endless rattling of the statistics that make Tony's appearance seem less likely by the hour.  

"I see you've made yourself at home."  Stane does not seem to be judging, but he should be.  Pepper has stopped cleaning.  She's stopped brushing her hair, does not bother to look in a mirror.  Her life has turned into an endless revolving door of motions that she does not remember deciding to make, where she wakes up and stares at the news on the television ( _because surely it would make every headline in America the instant he comes back?_ ) and then falls back into his bed.  If Tony were to see her now, she would be ashamed.  

"Are you going to kick me out?"  She smiles at him, and it is not a nice smile.  "Because I think Jarvis would just let me back in."

Jarvis does not answer.  He does not talk to Stane anymore.

"No.  No, this is yours as long as you want it."  Which might not be very long.  How long can you keep a home when it's owner is not there?  "I've come to talk to you about the subject of Tony's will."

She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath.  "I'd rather not."

"You have to."

"I don't want to."

"It would really be in your best interest to take a look."

"No."  She balls her hands into fists and slams them down onto her thighs.  "I am so  _sick_ of people coming in here and telling me what I need to do.  But as far as I'm concerned, I don't need to do anything.  Nothing matters but him, do you understand?  He's going to come back."

"He left you the house.  Did it the first night you moved into that spare bedroom."  She does not want to hear this.  Does not want to hear about the things that Tony was going to give her, because the bigger they are the more he must have cared about her, and she cannot handle that right now.  "Gave you SI stock.  A lot of it.  And a good amount of his money."  The file smacks down on the coffee table in front of her.  "You're not going to have to work another day in your life.  You could go home."

"And where would that be?"

"Anywhere."  Stane crouches down in front of her.  "This isn't the end, Pepper.  Even if it feels like it."  

It is the first night she really cries.

 

 

 

The theory is that he was kidnapped.

There are bad people in the world.  There are people who like to claw their way up no matter whose back they have to break to get there, and Tony is a man of many skills.  She had known before, in a distant sort of way that never really bothered her, that there were a lot of interested parties that would like nothing more than for Tony to be dead.

"We think he was taken."  Rhodey had asked her to come, and she had flown out to the base where he was stationed.  People had averted their eyes when she walked through the hallways, tipping their hats to her.  It felt like she was a widow.  "That the attack wasn't a coincidence."

"But there's been no ransom."  This wasn't something that happened to real people.  "No demands."

"No demands made of us,"  He says, and it's like she can breathe again, because here was someone else that thinks that he is alive, somewhere just out of their reach.   All they had to do was keep looking.

"You think he's alive?"  

He is handing her a life line.  "I do."

"And you thinks he's okay?"  She has other images in her head now, an endless revolving door of all the scenes from movies she had watched, all the different ways that people have to cause each other pain.  "They wouldn't hurt him, would they?  If they need him?"

"Not if he's doing what they want,"  He says, and that's worse than giving her a real answer, because when has Tony ever done what anyone else tells him to?

 

 

 

She thinks about it a lot, over those next few days, what choices he might be making.

There is nothing else that she can focus on, just him alone and scared and hurting.  She thinks of what they might be asking and what they would do to him if he said no, and even though she knows better than most the danger that Tony's compliance could bring, what could happen if his brain falls into the wrong hands, she finds herself hoping that Tony had given in, just so she could pretend that he had a chance to be safe.

 _I said at any cost,_ she thought, thinking back to all those prayers she screamed out to the sky until her voice was ripped raw,  _What kind of person does this make me?_

 

 

 

 Pepper gets cornered in a bathroom, and she has two thoughts.

The first is  _screw you, Stane_ because it was Stane that came into the mansion and threw a brand new dress and heels at her, saying that business was going as normal and that meant her being seen in public, and the second is  _Jesus Christ, not her again,_ because she distinctly remembered this person as one of the girls that she had to wave good-bye from the garage after Tony had had his fun.

"Miss Potts."  Her smile is too polite.  They are not friends.  They should be snapping at each other's throats with barely concealed hostility, but everyone has been walking on egg shells around her, like everyone was able to see how this had ripped her open.  Like maybe they sensed that she was not as strong as she was two months ago, and any push in the wrong direction could send her toppling over the edge. She just wished she knew what the right direction was.  "Could I ask you a question?"

 _No,_ Pepper thinks, but doesn't say anything, just watches her reflection in the mirror, and the woman ( _Christy?  She thinks its Christy?_ ) is already talking.

"What do you say to those who think that Stark Industries will fail without a Stark to lead it?"  There is a tape recorder shoved under her nose.  "Do you think Stane is up to the task?"

"Tony's going to come back," She says, numb, robotic, her voice too faint and her head suddenly spinning.  She has to clutch at the sink for balance.  

"Of course we say that, but it's been two months, Ms. Potts, do you really think that he's going to come waltzing through the door?"  This woman in front of her has one awards, Pepper thinks dimly, the thought coming from a part of her brain that is not in this brightly lit bathroom with it's buzzing lights.   You do not get that kind of reporting by being gentle.  "I know he's a fan of dramatic entrances, but really, do you have any evidence at all that he's still alive?"

Pepper starts crying.  It was not as explosive as she thought it would be, but quiet, a slight shaking of the shoulders and a hand over her mouth, a gasp hiccupping in her throat.  She turns to the wall so no one can see her tears, and is vaguely aware of the soft sound of surprise that Christine is making behind her and the sound of a tape recording clattering into the sink.

"Oh, god,"  Pepper says, shaking out her hands and trying to blink the tears out of her eyes, grateful for the fact that Christy thinks to move to the lock the door and the damp paper towel she has shoved into her hands.  The only thing worse than this would be if more people witnessed her break down.  "He's got to come back.  He's Tony Stark. He's done all kind of impossible things, why not this?"

"I'm so sorry."  Christine actually looks ashamed of herself.  "I shouldn't have asked.  I knew I shouldn't, but-,"

"You were doing your job.  Just do me a favor?"  Pepper wipes at her eyes and takes one more shuddering breath before heading towards the door.  "Can we keep this off the record?"

She agrees, but Pepper still scans the paper for days to see when it would show up in print.  As far as she knows, it never does.

 

 

 Old prayers are as familiar as heartbeats.

Hail Mary's slip off her tongue without her keeping track of the words, just lost in the feeling of her knees on the hardwood floor and her hands knotted together.  She had learned them back when she was sitting in a pew with her feet unable to reach the floor but has not said them since, and even though she had half expected not to be able to remember them, drawing them back to the front of her mind was an effort that got easier with each repetition.  The words have meaning, she knows, separate for what she was asking for, but all she was hearing was her plea to bring Tony back home.

"Just bring him back to me."  The tears are bitter when they fall past her lips but she does not swipe them away.  "Please.  He's all I have."

"Do you hear that, you bastard?"  She yells it, and this time she is not talking to God, she is talking to Tony, where ever he might be.  "Haven't I done everything that you've asked of me?  Every little thing?  And you can't even come back home?"

Her throat is ripped raw.  She had been screaming and crying for days, it felt like there was a hurricane building up inside her.  This is what it must be like, when you get over being numb.

"I'm waiting for you."  Her knees are aching but she does not get up.  Pain is good.  Pain is penance.  Maybe it will make up for the things that she has been thinking, about how badly she wants Tony home, that she will take it at any cost, even if he has to build a weapon to destroy the world a million times over to get to her.  Not that he would.  It was one of the most glaring truths about him- Tony was a good man, beneath it all, and a strong one who does not want to bend to anyone else's will.  He's never been known as a team player.  "I've been waiting for you for almost three months now, and it's getting hard.  Everyone keeps telling me to give up.  And you know something?"  Her voice has calmed to a whisper.  "I'm going to have to.  It's getting hard.  I've gotten tired, Tony.  Not just of waiting.  Tired of everything."

Tired of sleeping in that bed that he isn't in, of walking through his bathroom and spraying his cologne on old t-shirts just so they smell like him again.  Tired of telling her mother and her sister and Happy that she's fine when she clearly isn't.  Tired of Jarvis telling her that there are no updates, tired of Rhodey saying that he is trying his best, tired of wondering what has happened to him.  

She stands up, and moves up the aisle until she is facing the row of candles.  Her hand is steady as she lights it, this one thing to guide his soul back home.

(Someone will come to snuff it out, she knows, to make room for other people's loved ones.  Other people's prayers and pain.  It is the one thing this world has no shortage of.)

"I love you, by the way. Probably should have told you that before, huh?"  She holds her hand over the flame until the heat of it kisses her fingers.  More pain.  More penance.  "I know you're going to come home.  I just thought it would be a lot faster."

It'd taken her two and a half months, but the words are finally starting to feel like a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic
> 
> Also I spent like three hours on a Loki fic and it FLOPPED so if you want to go over to my infinity war saga and read it for me, it would really make me feel better about it


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